Monday, March 26, 2012

How awesome is this? I won an award. I was chosen by my new blogging friend from Absolute Write, Diane Carlisle. Thank you Diane! I am the recipient of the prestigious Liebster Award.This has been traditionally awarded to honor those blogs which motivate and inspire us. It is also granted to those blog authors who have accumulated 200 followers or less. Its purpose is to summon new followers and increase awareness of other noteworthy blogs.I accept and will follow the steps in order to promote a continuum of this worthy cause. Here is my list of chosen recipients for this award:

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Write wherever the prompt inspires you. It can be fiction or non-fiction, all wet or high and dry, mushy mud or hard-packed earth. If you want to go with snow, hail, boiling hellrain, biblical frograin, or some other kind of precipitation, knock yourself out.Here is my addition to the blog chain and don't forget to check out the other blogs and there Rainy Days prompts below.

Brewing Storms

“Your mom is having chest pains.”

“Dad, please call an ambulance.”

“Nah, I’m just going to take her to ‘our’ emergency room.”

“WAIT. I’m going with you, pick me up.”

Dad then hung up the phone. I knew I had 5 minutes tops to call my brother, get my purse and shoes, remember 10th grade CPR class, explain to my husband and boys that if I ever have chest pains it’s okay to call 911 and not to do what grandpa does and would you please run to the driveway with me to try to stop him. While I was rambling on, running through the house like a chicken with its head cut off, I was also on the phone with my brother, who was talking to me,

“Don’t let them out of your driveway. Just call 911.”

And I was whispering to my husband,

“Have you seen my shoes?”

My husband threw up his hands,

“Jesus Christ.”

A crackle of thunder put a slight pause on our chaos. We all looked up at the midnight blue horizon. Clusters of gray and black colors found each other and gathered above us. And as if the sky knew it had our attention, flashes of lightening followed the forming ominous clouds. Mom and dad pulled into our driveway.

I ran to the car waving my cell phone as the first raindrops began to spill out of the swelling clouds,

“I can call 911 right now, you can just stay in the car and they will be here in less than ten minutes.”

I had inadvertently hung up on my brother. I also realized that mom and dads windows were up. By the time I made it to the car dad was in reverse. So I jumped in the back seat as the car rolled out of the driveway. I started to explain to my parents, which wasn’t the first time for either of them,

“You can’t fool around with chest pains, we really should call 911.”

Their come back is always the same. The emergency room they frequent when there is anything to do with the heart is the one that they will eventually be sent to because chest pains and heart related aliments mean a 24-hour evaluation. And this emergency facility has overnight accommodations. So they’re saving a trip. While they are explaining this to me I’m sitting in the back seat and dad is shooting me looks through the rear view mirror, I was quite certain he was ready to say,

“Don’t make me pull this car over.”

I called my brother to tell him that I too, was now in the car settling in for a half hour drive.

“Jesus Christ.” He exclaimed.

He hung up on me.

The rain that was just starting to fall when I was waving around my cell phone was now beating down on the cars windshield. The sky that once held the bright shining sun was enveloped in darkness. The clouds had burst open unloading their heavy burden upon us with a rain and hail mixture. I sat back in my seat and let dad give his full attention to the road. While others pulled over under bridges to wait out the downpour dad continued. My brother called back,

“When you get there make sure you tell them mom is having chest pains, they have to take her right away.”

“Of course I’m going to tell them that, I know to tell them she’s having chest pains.”

“Oh.” Mom interrupted. “I’m not having chest pains now.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. I couldn’t tell if I was hearing the hail pounding on the roof of the car or if my brother was banging his head against the wall.

I assured him that I had this and he said he would meet us there. We made it through the storm and to the favorite emergency room door. Mom and I walked in and out of the side of my mouth, under my breath, I told her,

“I’m going to hold you by the arm, look sicker, so they take us right away after I tell them you are having chest pains.”

They took mom to a room and dad joined her. While a nurse helped mom settle in I left to wait for my brother. When he arrived we just looked at each other and shook our heads. We stood in silence for a few minutes and watched the raindrops fall in the puddles outside the windows of the waiting room. The dark sky that hung over us just minutes ago began to clear and the sun found a gap in the clouds to take a peek at what it had missed.